eps aiming at the erection of the framework of the
Administrative Order of the Faith of Baha'u'llah were being simultaneously
undertaken by His followers in the East and in the West, a fierce attack
was launched in an obscure village in Egypt on a handful of believers, who
were trying to establish there one of the primary institutions of that
Order--an attack which, viewed in the perspective of history, will be
acclaimed by future generations as a landmark not only in the Formative
Period of the Faith but in the history of the first Baha'i century.
Indeed, the sequel to this assault may be said to have opened a new
chapter in the evolution of the Faith itself, an evolution which, carrying
it through the successive stages of repression, of emancipation, of
recognition as an independent Revelation, and as a state religion, must
lead to the establishment of the Baha'i state and culminate in the
emergence of the Baha'i World Commonwealth.

Originating in a country which can rightly boast of being the acknowledged
center of both the Arab and Muslim worlds; precipitated by the action,
taken on their own initiative, by the ecclesiastical representatives of
the largest communion in Islam; the direct outcome of a series of
disturbances instigated by some of the members of that communion designed
to suppress the activities of certain followers of the Faith who had held
a clerical rank among them, this momentous development in the fortunes of
a struggling community has directly contributed, to a considerable degree,
to the consolidation and the enhancement of the prestige of the
Administrative Order which that community had begun to erect. It will,
moreover, as its repercussions are more widely spread to other Islamic
countries, and its vast significance is more clearly apprehended by the
adherents of both Christianity and Islam, hasten the termination of the
period of transition through which the Faith, now in the formative stage
of its growth, is passing.

It was in the village of Kawmu's-Sa'ayidih, in the district of Beba, of
the province of Beni Suef in Upper Egypt, that, as a result of the
religious fanaticism which the formation of a Baha'i assembly had kindled
in the breast of the headman of that village, and of the grave accusations
made by him to both the District Police Officer and the Governor of the
province--accusations which aroused the Muhammadans to such a pitch of
excitement as to cause them to perpetrate shameful